WATER CRISIS In THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

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Water availability has for millennia shaped the culture of the people in the part of the world now commonly referred to as the Middle East and North Africa. This huge region extends from the Maghreb, comprising Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and sometimes Mauritania, into the Mashriq, comprising Egypt, The Sudan, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Yemen, and parts of Turkey. The World Bank (1994) also included Iran with this region. (SeeMap .)

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The annual renewable water resources of the region were given by the World Bank (1994) to be about 350 billion cu m (1 cu m = 35.3 cu ft), with almost 50% of this water crossing national boundaries. This amounts to about 1,400 cu m per person per year, which is much less than 20% of the global average. The accompanying table shows the water availability in the Middle Eastern and North African countries. Of the 17 nations listed, only 6 had per capita availability of more than 1,000 cu m per person per year in 1990, and 6 had less than 500 cu m per capita per year. The figures of 1,000 and 500 cu m are often assumed to be the lower limits on water availability, below which countries experience severe water stress. Estimates of the 1990 withdrawals of water from the rivers and aquifers reveal that fully 87% was withdrawn for agriculture, mostly for irrigation.

One seeming anomaly is that five of the countries--Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen--used more than 100% of their total available water. They achieved this by drawing on groundwater on a very large scale. In addition to those nations that exceeded their available water, Egypt, Israel, and Jordan were essentially at their limit.

This very tight resource situation was further complicated by the fact that both the rainfall and the streamflows in the region are highly variable, both within a year and between the years, which makes water resources difficult and expensive to manage. For example, in addition to the severely water-stressed countries, Algeria, Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia suffer serious deficits. The table also points to a major problem brewing for the future; by 2025 the water availability per capita will have dropped to less than one-half its present unsatisfactory level, and only two countries, Iran and Iraq, will be above 1,000 cu m per capita per year.

Potential for Conflict.

Despite much talk about water’s being the cause of the next war in the Middle East, there is little evidence that water has been a major cause of war in modern history, although disputes over it may have been one of many contributing causes. Not "causing" wars does not imply, however, that water disputes are not major sources of international friction. There are 23 international rivers in the region. At one time or another, there have been disputes between countries over most of them, but the most contentious remain the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Yarmuk, and Jordan. Conflicts also have arisen from the use of groundwater aquifers that cross national boundaries, notably between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. There could also be strife between Egypt and Libya over the latter’s extensive $30 billion development of the Nubian Aquifer to supply its coastal cities by means of its "Great Man-Made River."

Some of the water available to countries in the region comes from other nations. Obviously, the higher the percentage of the total received in that way, the greater the potential for conflict. Egypt, for example, in recent years received 97% of its water from outside its boundaries, Iraq 66%, and Israel 20%. Syria was in the ambiguous situation of receiving large amounts from upstream Turkey but passing even more on to downstream Iraq.

Since 1993 further complications have been added to the transboundary disputes with the incorporation of the Palestinian region into the water balance between Israel and Jordan. Also, the relations between Turkey and its downstream neighbours, Syria and Iraq, can only worsen as Turkey pushes forward with its giant water-development program in the Tigris and Euphrates basins. The Nile basin is also becoming more contentious, with the Ethiopians challenging the Egyptian and Sudanese claims to 80% of the flow of the Nile. Conflict over the use of the aquifers in the West Bank and Gaza will remain a major stumbling block to a final peace settlement in that region unless the issue can be addressed creatively.

The conflicts about water use are not restricted to international problems but can also occur within countries. The major conflict in such circumstances is between agricultural and urban uses. Irrigation is by far the largest use for water in each country in the region and is predicted to continue increasing far beyond the water availability for the region as a whole. Nonagricultural demands are also increasing, even more rapidly than those for irrigation.

Another major conflict is between human use of water and the needs of the environment. In many areas rivers and aquifers are becoming polluted, and wetlands are drying up. Ten of the countries in the region suffer from severe water-quality problems; the only ones rated as having moderate problems are those very arid countries where water use currently exceeds 100% of available supplies but that have few or no perennial streams. They include Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Possible Solutions.

Despite the gloomy prognoses, there are several promising approaches to water management in the region that suggest there will be enough water for all reasonable demands well into the middle of the next century. The most effective of them are expected to be integrated management of water resources and rational water pricing. During the next decade, the water managers in the various countries will have to face up to rationalizing water uses in such a way that the water goes to the users who will derive the greatest value from it while still maintaining the quality of the surrounding environment. Fortunately, the water used in agriculture dwarfs any of the other uses, and its economic value is typically less than one-tenth of that of water for urban or industrial consumers. Consequently, a small percentage of water diverted from agriculture would yield abundant quantities for all other uses at little cost. Removing 200 ha (500 ac) from irrigation would provide 50 litres (13.2 gal) of water per person per day for almost 200,000 urban dwellers.

There is, however, great resistance to the reallocation of agricultural water in most government agencies, particularly those concerned with food production and "food self-sufficiency." There are two reasons that indicate that this concern is misplaced: first, in most countries a 10% improvement in irrigation efficiency is generally very inexpensive to attain; and second, the concept of food self-sufficiency should be replaced by the concept of food security. In this case the water reallocated from agriculture can be replaced by importing food that would have required considerable irrigation if grown locally.

Even for the rapidly growing urban demands, more than 50% is typically used for toilet flushing and other sanitary activities. Moving away from water-based sanitation to dry toilets will save considerable amounts of water in the future. Water losses in municipal systems continue to be very large and could be greatly reduced by better maintenance and management of the systems. Conservation of water in households and industry can also be useful. Finally, pricing of water remains a powerful tool that can be used to help implement the reallocations between water users and to stimulate improved efficiency of water use. Establishment of tradable water rights and markets for water along with privatization of the water-supply utilities would also go a long way toward achieving a less-water-constricted future.

The solutions described above are typically characterized as "demand-side" options. Unfortunately, most of the current proposals are still linked to what are called "supply-side" options. For example, the large-scale Libyan diversions from the Nubian Aquifer are designed to increase the supply to the coastal cities at huge expense without requiring Libyans to face up to the real environmental costs of supplying the water. Apart from additional investment in desalination for urban or industrial users, the era of supply-side development has all but come to an end in the region, and it is unrealistic to expect that any such megaprojects will be economically and environmentally sustainable.